How remote work impacts gender equality

So we thought we’d get bring together some of our findings into a blog post for those interested!

The workforce leadership gender gap is an ongoing, persistent, and frustrating problem. Women still hold a tiny percentage of leadership positions in companies.

We all know that this needs to change and we know that there are many benefits to having more women in leadership roles, a clear one being money.

Change is needed to close the gender gap more quickly, and we believe that one of the more promising places to start is remote work.

On average females make only three percent less than men online, compared to approximately 20-25 percent less in most western economies.* Now, we're advocates for gender equality in all it's forms - whilst this still isn't perfect, it's certainly an improvement.

So, yes, remote work is an even greater chance for us to close the infamous gender gap.

In fact, Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist, argues, the gender pay gap could disappear; women wouldn’t be edged out of promotions, leadership, higher pay and even work itself once they started families—the pivot point that stalls most women’s work trajectories today.

Being a business leader is especially difficult for women because they have disproportionate responsibility for caregiving.

51 percent of women say that being a working mother makes it harder for them to advance their careers while only 16% percent of fathers feel the same way.*

What else we here you ask?

Remote working allows mothers the flexibility they need to raise a family and pursue their career at the same time.

Those famous words - flexible work - that we’re so often scared to voice to the boss. The ability to work from home, to do hours that suit both them and the company, to have a better work life balance and not to have to ask other people to pick up the kids if they don’t want to.

“It’s not so much the government passing anti-discrimination or family friendly policies or men doing more at home (“although that wouldn’t hurt”) that would at last bring gender equality to the workplace. It’s flexible work.” Claudia Godin

And last but not least, did you know that remote working enables new kinds of demographics in organisational structures?

In a recent study 53 companies with at least half of the employees working remotely, 19 percent had a female CEO, compared to 4 percent of S&P 500 companies.*

And at Remote Mission we're one of them! We believe that a more inclusive and diverse team leads to perhaps a more feminine approach to management which seeks to support and facilitate the organisation's ability to move forward as a whole.

Diversity, equality, inclusion, empowerment all lead to better work environment, more trust, higher morale, more creativity, better productivity and an all round better company!